Things to do in London this weekend (11-12 April)

Robert Icke’s take on Romeo & Juliet has Sliding Doors scenes, wherein we see pivotal moments play out differently to Shakespeare’s plot, before a blinding flash of light resets the scene and we see the story take its inexorable turn for the tragic. At best, they’re an effective way of countering the fact that the bleak end of Shakespeare’s romantic tragedy is only arrived at by a series of mind-boggling coincidences and mishaps. Stranger Things star Sadie Sink’s gawky Juliet is very good, and when she and Noah Jupe’s puppyish Romeo set eyes on each other for the first time, it is electric. Toss in a gorgeous, drone-heavy electronic score from Giles Thomas, and you have something special. 

Most Londoners know about Forza Wine by now. This small plates restaurant and wine bar is a dependable place to have a Good Time. It’s where you go to meet The Girls to share a bottle of natty orange and crispy cauliflower fritti. It’s the sort of place you could take a date, but your mum would also quite like, and the kind of trendy establishment that’s perfect fodder for the Real Housewives of Clapton meme account. After seven years in the game, Forza knows what it’s doing, and it does it well. The cult resto has now arrived in Soho, launching its third outpost. Already extremely popular, the space is large and airy. The menu is not wildly different from their other locations. That famous cauliflower fritti with aioli is as crispy and addictive as ever. Mussels in a creamy crusco pepper sauce are rich and tangy with a delightful kick. A perfectly-melty mound of Genovese ragu is sweet and robust. We’ve no doubt Forza Wine Soho will be hugely successful. 

Henry VIII’s former gaff is already one of the most splendid-looking buildings in London, but fill it with 10,000 tulips and you’ve got something mighty special to look at. Hampton Court Palace’s Tulip Festival is one of the biggest planted displays of the colouful flowers in the UK and is a good excuse to celebrate the start of spring. See the buds pouring out of the Tudor wine fountain and in floating tulip vases, and spot rare, historic and specialist varieties. There are also expert talks on the flowers and craft activities themed around them. The palace’s expert gardeners predict the displays will look at their best between April 11 and 26, though ‘Mother Nature always has the final say.’

After a successful first edition last year, we're getting a second helping of a festival that highlights one of the more unsung parts of our favourite movies, tv shows and games – the soundtracks. London Soundtrack Festival puts the scores front and centre, with a series of screenings, talks and performances celebrating the musicians who make fictional worlds sound so exciting, tense and emotional. James Bond fans will be thrilled by Homegrown Heroes, a night of David Arnold scores and slick action movie sounds (Apr 9). There's also a masterclass on music for games, a talk on John Williams, and a screening of Brian de Palma’s Obsession (1976) (Apr 9) which will be introduced by Norma Herrmann, widow of the legendary composer Bernard Herrmann.

Serving up an eclectic mix of live music, visual arts, spoken word, podcasts and club nights, Roundhouse Three Sixty is a springtime festival at Chalk Farm’s famous circular arts venue. After its first edition last year, it's back for a second run that coincides with the 20th anniversary of Roundhouse's big relaunch as a youth-centric arts space. The month is headlined by some massive names. Imogen Heap will drop in for an evening of songs and conversations, Kae Tempest will introduce his new novel, and Amaarae's ‘Black Star Experience’ (Apr 23) is a live show based on her acclaimed latest album. But elsewhere on the line-up you'll find loads of opportunities for rising voices to make their mark. 

This Tony and Olivier Award-winning musical – adapted by Harvey Fierstein with songs by Cyndi Lauper from the 2005 Britflick – was first seen in the West End a decade ago. And now it struts back into town with energy to spare. Charlie Price (Matt Cardle) has reluctantly inherited his recently deceased dad’s Northampton shoe factory, which will be forced to close in a matter of weeks due to dwindling sales. But a chance encounter with cabaret and drag performer Lola (Johannes Radebe) and the broken heel of a boot she used to whack a couple of bigots sparks an idea. Together, can they meet a market need for durable, fabulous footwear while saving the factory by making boots not brogues? Even before the appearance of the inclusion Pride flag, there’s something joyfully subversive about keeping business local – a trope so often co-opted by the far right – by manufacturing high-heeled boots for drag queens. This production is a blaze of colour at a dismally grey time.    

In The Super Mario Galaxy Movie we see the inexplicable warrior plumber siblings Mario and Luigi (voiced by Chris Pratt and Charlie Day) tasked with saving the princess from Bowser. It’s a trite plot, the brothers, plus various eccentric hangers-on, traverse a galaxy composed of small, weird planets in an effort to rescue the abducted royal. But The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is, nonetheless, largely delightful. Directed again by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, it has the same breezily silly humour and a palpable love of the worlds and characters they’re depicting. It’s made with love and it hits the spot.

In cinemas worldwide Wed April 1.

Yes, it's the weekend after Easter. But the Horniman Museum and Gardens’ Spring Fair is maybe the most efficient way to cram as much spring fun into a single day as possible. The gardens will be taken over by kid-friendly fun galore: in previous years, that's meant Easter bonnet parades, animal walks, craft tables, bubbles, and plenty of street food from stalls on the terrace. This is an outdoor event that'll take place whatever the weather, so bring a brolly if it looks like rain. 

The ingredients to this 2012 play by Moonlight screenwriter Tarell Alvin McCraney feel familiar. Elite American high school, scholarship choir boys, one gay and bullied. A floppy-haired ‘think-outside-the-box’ teacher in the vein of The History Boys’ Hector or Dead Poets’ Society’s Keating. But in unfolding vignettes, arguments, sung spirituals and choral scenes – directed tenderly by Nancy Medina and Tatenda Shamiso – it becomes clear how McCraney is lulling us into familiar territory in order to then drift in his own direction. McCraney is skilful in showing us a group of Black teens under constant pressure. All of them are fighting to justify their place, proving themselves to family, to teachers, to themselves and - the torrid undercurrent here - to society.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses is a classic play. Starting life in 1782 as an epistolary novel, Christopher Hampton’s 1985 stage adaptation was a sensation, adapted into a hit 1988 film and clearly responsible for the ‘90s teen remake Cruel Intentions. This is a pretty good production of it, as you’d expect from the great Marianne Elliott’s first show at the NT in over a decade, with a to die for cast headed by Lesley Manville and Aiden Turner. The duo play callous, capricious, above all very sexy French toffs Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil and Vicomte Sébastien de Valmont, ex-lovers whose relationship has degenerated into callous game playing. It’s a really good production with two sensational leads, of a play that has long stopped being a sexy novelty and now kind of sits as a guilty pleasure. 

Pick your way through a huge mix of vintage stalls at Flea London. Each one will be selling a tightly curated mix of vintage fashion, statement jewellery, art, books, vinyl, cameras, cult design pieces, and one-off homeware finds, alongside independent designers, jewellers and emerging makers. The aim? To champion sustainability over fast fashion and get us all au fait with the art of reusing and repurposing. Once your bags are bursting, there’ll be artisan food traders on hand selling fresh pastries, drinks and other fare. 

It’s been 75 years since the Festival of Britain, an era-defining cultural event designed to boost national morale post-WW2, took place on London’s Southbank. There’s a whole host of events lined up throughout 2026 to commemorate the anniversary. To honour the thousands of pioneers in dance, music, literature and art that have graced the Southbank Centre’s hallowed halls since 1951, legendary illustrator Quentin Blake has created thirty life-size characters who will be dotted around the venue between now and November. Look out for dancers, skaters, parkour athletes, opera singers, a violinist and more. 

John Proctor is the Villain is a period drama about 2018, and what Kimberly Belflower’s play does brilliantly is nail the intersection between the relatively brief apex of the #MeToo movement and a generation of smart, naive school girls who would have been the right age to absorb its rhetoric at the precise moment they’re discovering what it was a reaction to. Plus, it has a banging soundtrack, with Lorde’s 2017 hit ‘Green Light’ embedded deep in its bones. Danya Taymor’s production is an absolute blast, the many serious issues raised all of a piece with its breathless ebullience and Belflower’s endlessly witty text. As much as anything else, it’s a wholehearted celebration of teen girl dorkiness and a rebuttal to the idea their lives should be viewed through a sexual lens, even in sympathy.

In 2022 66-year-old Veronica Ryan was the oldest artist to ever win the Turner Prize. Four years later Whitechapel Gallery is staging one of the biggest presentations of her work to date. Known for her prize-winning exhibition at Spike Island in Bristol, Ryan has also created comissions dedicated to the Windrush generation, which included giant marble and bronze sculptures of fruit. Through more than 100 works, Multiple Conversations will span Ryan’s multifaceted practice, which includes work with sculpture, textiles and on paper. As well as displaying her most recent creations, the exhibit will include rediscovered works from the 1980s – large-scale sculptures made from plaster and beaten lead, as well as vivid drawings.

French actor Denis Lavant (Holy Motors) has a face filmmakers love. Creased and pockmarked, with a bulbous nose and prominent ears, it’s the sort of visage that’s compelling to watch do practically anything. It serves Swedish director John Skoog’s oddly mesmerising monochrome folk tale particularly well, considering it’s essentially 90 minutes of watching one man’s massive DIY home renovation project. Inspired by true events, it’s a story of fruitless obsession. At the peak of the Cold War, Karl-Göran Persson, a farmhand in rural Sweden, dedicated his twilight years to transforming his modest cottage into a communal fallout shelter, or ‘redoubt.’ He successfully constructed a fortification for a war that never came. A gifted physical performer, there’s a hypnotic manner to Lavant’s movement, even if all he’s doing is trudging across a field or preparing to suck an egg yolk directly from its shell.

Rebecca Lucy Taylor, the artist also known as Self Esteem, is a hugely versatile character actor, and here she plays the theatrical, theatre-literate singer Maggie Frisby – a minor rock singer, angry, amused and very drunk as her band disintegrates at a 1969 Oxford student ball. David Hare’s 1975 play Teeth ’n’ Smiles is a vehicle to fire Taylor up as she pours her heart and soul and cynicism at the music industry into the role of Maggie, combusting spectacularly – and at one point, almost literally – at the tail-end of the ’60s. 

Ghanaian-American playwright Jocelyn Bioh returns with director Monique Touko to bring the play that earned her five Tony Award nominations in 2024 – and it’s easy to see why it was such a hit on Broadway. Set over the course of a single working day in the heat of summer, it begins with the shutters of Jaja’s Harlem salon being hauled open. But Jaja herself is nowhere to be seen: instead, her 18-year-old daughter Marie has been left in charge, while her mother is off preparing for her wedding day to a white American. The daily grind continues as the staff arrive to braid hair, bitch and banter, offering us a small slice of their everyday routine. The play uses the salon space to host big conversations. As customers pass through the women open up about their lives in America, their journeys to get there, and their relationships and ambitions. The skill of Bioh’s writing lies in simply presenting a moment in time and place. 

With over 400 objects, including 100 ensembles and 50 artworks (by the likes of Salvador Dalí, Picasso and Man Ray), as well as accessories, jewellery, photographs, perfumes and an excellent collection of buttons, Schiaparelli presents a deep dive into the fantastical and surreal world of the fashion house. Founded on Paris’ Place Vendôme in 1927, the exhibition spans the 1920s to the present day, showing glorious garments from Creative Director Daniel Roseberry, who has been at the helm since 2019. The clothes truly are pieces of art and prove that haute couture could always do with a bit of humour. 

Awaken your inner child by delving into enchanted lands, magical creatures and timeless tales at the British Library’s interactive family-friendly exhibition. All the bangers from your childhood will be explored – from Goldilocks, to Aladdin – through books, artworks, interactive displays, theatrical design, story sharing spaces, costumes and activities. Opening in time for the Easter holidays, Fairy Tales is ideal for passing a few hours with the little’uns. 

This is a big show of big paintings. Big, energetic, happy paintings which are just as enjoyable to stand in front of as one can imagine they were to make. Hurvin Anderson is the artist responsible, and the 80 paintings on show at Tate Britain amount to 30 years worth of work. Some date back to 1995 when he was an art student at the Royal College of Art; others were made this year (some he even finished off once they’d been hung). Looking at them feels like you’ve been carried somewhere else, if only briefly, sharing in that condition of being in one place while thinking about another.

Thornton Wilder’s Our Town is as American as apple pie, so on paper it seems like a strange first choice of play for Michael Sheen’s new Welsh National Theatre. But the whole thing manages to be so exuberantly Welsh that you’ll soon forget the town of Grover’s Corners is supposed to be somewhere in New Hampshire. Francesca Goodridge’s production does Welshify a few details, but it softens (and maybe sentimentalises) a strange play that’s often intentionally served up cold and dry. It’s impressive and undeniable that the Welsh National Theatre has stamped itself on a classic with its very first production. Wales is lucky to have Michael Sheen, who has turned his back on Hollywood to launch his new theatre company. And if the WNT productions keep transferring this way, then we’re lucky to have him too.

Joo Young Won used to be head chef at the Michelin-starred Galvin at Windows, his new restaurant, Calong, is cosy and simple, with food made for sharing. Chef Joo was raised in South Korea, but began his cookery career in the UK, and for a long time focused on French technique. It shows. Calong sees him cooking dishes inspired by his native cuisine in a masterful light-touch fusion fashion. A warm pumpkin and crisp pear salad is delicately dressed with gochujang, cured Chalkstream trout with perfectly tart sesame and plum soy, the fried chicken is crunchy yet silky, and a BBQ onglet is sweet and tender with a bulgogi jus. It’s one of the most exciting restaurants Stoke Newington has to offer. 

Get a glimpse of the hidden lives of queer people in midcentury New York at this intimate exhibition. Before homosexuality was legalised, Donna Gottschalk photographed the people she described as ‘brave and defiant warriors’ for daring to live openly as themselves, and take part in the emerging lesbian, trans and gay rights movements. This Photographers Gallery exhibition of her work puts her images in conversation with texts by writer Hélène Giannecchini, who is decades her junior, creating an intergenerational dialogue charting changing times. 

The National Portrait Gallery has been on a solid run in recent years, particularly when it comes to exhibitions on contemporary portraiture – we loved its exhibitions on The Face and Jenny Saville last year – so we have high hopes for this, the biggest exhibition to be shown in the UK to date from the iconic photographer Catherine Opie. Curated in collaboration with the artist, the exhibition will span the Ohio-born artist’s three-decade career, exploring representations of home, family, identity, politics and power structures through Opie’s vivid and colourful portrait photographs. Works featured in the exhibition will span her first major work, Being and Having (1991), her portraits of LGBTQ+ friends inspired by court painter Hans Holbein, to her Baroque-like portraits of artists.

Tracey Emin: A Second Life is an evocative experience. Positioned as a 40-year retrospective through the pioneering artist’s vast and varied repertoire, the show lays bare Emin’s life through her distinct and often unsettling art, from career highs – such as the iconic, Turner Prize-nominated ‘My Bed’, which is every bit as shocking and moving today as it was in 1998 – to stark personal lows in work depicting her experiences with sexual violence, abortion and recent life-threatening illness. As you can imagine, with such subject matter, it is not always a comfortable experience for the artist and the viewer alike. However, Emin’s flair for dark comedy adds moments of levity throughout. ‘Mad Tracey from Margate’ is truly a force to be reckoned with, and a master of reflecting society back at itself, warts and all.

The Picture Comes First, Rose Wylie’s marvellous retrospective at the Royal Academy, is hugely varied in its subject matter – ranging from the Blitz to Nicole Kidman – Wylie’s paintings are unified by a joyful and vibrant energy which beams out from all of them. The RA’s high ceilings and grand interiors act as a brilliant canvas for the artist’s large-scale, often child-like works. The 91-year-old Wylie is the first female painter to have a full retrospective in the space and it only adds to Wylie’s credentials as a trailblazing feminist artist. This show is a fantastic testament to an artist who has proven tenfold that age is no barrier to reaching one’s full potential. Equal parts puzzling, entertaining and thoughtful, this show is guaranteed to leave you in a better mood than when you arrived.

Broadwick Soho landed in 2023 with serious flair and has been delivering a hit of West End glamour ever since. Inside the hotel, Dear Jackie is its seductive Italian dining room, all Murano glow, red silk walls and plush booths made for lingering. Expect refined Italian comfort food, standout pasta and classic cocktails from Bar Jackie to set the mood.

Our exclusive Time Out offer saves you 30% (now £33), for three courses and a cocktail worth up to £14. It’s an indulgent pre-theatre treat or the kind of Soho dinner that could easily turn into a late night.

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Escape reality through maximum immersion and experience 42 masterpieces from 29 of the world’s most iconic artists, each reimagined beyond belief, through cutting-edge technology. Situated in Marble Arch, Frameless plays host to four unique galleries with hypnotic visuals and a dazzling score. Enjoy 90 minutes of surreal artwork from Bosch, Dalí and more for just £23.60!

Save 20% on tickets, only through Time Out Offers